(AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File). FILE - In this May 16, 2012, file photo, the Facebook logo is displayed on an iPad in Philadelphia. Facebook suspended Cambridge Analytica, a data-analysis firm that worked for President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, over...

A former employee of a Trump-affiliated data-mining firm says the firm "took fake news to the next level".

(RNN) – A self-proclaimed confidant of 23-year-old Sydney Leathers named her as the mistress in the latest scandal involving New York mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner.

Lou Colagiovanni, a political blogger, shared with CNN on Wednesday texts and unedited pictures passed between the two. Weiner, a married Congressman who resigned after a similar situation became public in 2011, allegedly had the affair with Leathers in 2012.

He said he came forward after details of the affair were released Tuesday on website TheDirty.com.

"I feel this was my story," he said to CNN. "I had cultivated this story. I sat on it for months. I was reluctant to release it because Sydney told me, 'Listen, I don't want this story to go out, I don't want anybody to know about it.'"

The woman, who was not identified by TheDirty, said she and Weiner never had sex.

Colagiovanni described his friend as a passionate liberal from Princeton, IN, whom he met through postings on the political Facebook page he ran. He said she idealized Weiner, 48, and claimed to be in love with him, although she later broke it off after becoming "disgusted" with him.

The two talked regularly via texts, social media and by phone for eight months to a year, Colagiovanni said to CNN. They also exchanged nude pictures.

Weiner sent messages from an account he created under the pseudonym Carlos Danger. On Wednesday, the site Buzzfeed named Leathers as the woman linked to Weiner, based on an unnamed source and discovered pictures from Facebook and Formspring.

Leathers has made her social media accounts private.

Political opponents called for Weiner to bow out of the mayor's race upon news of the relationship. Weiner has pledged to remain in, and his wife, Huma Abedin, publicly proclaimed her support at a news conference.

Prior to the news, Weiner had been a favorite to become New York City's next mayor.